Poetic Justice
by FantaC
Summary: Complete! Sequel to Only the Beginning & Scents and Sensibility. Warning: blood, guts and gore!


Disclaimer: As much as I'd like to "own" Hannibal Lecter, Thomas Harris already has that privilege and honor!

Author's note: The idea of Poetic Justice is actually what started this whole series. I had even named the first story by this title. It became apparent that it wouldn't fit when a totally different story emerged, hence Only the Beginning. Scents and Sensibility continued the story. The idea of the creamsicle came when I saw a bottle of vanilla bubble bath while I was washing my hair with orange/citrus shampoo. I'm happy to say that the original idea and title are both used in this story. Two years have gone by and Sadie now identifies completely with the name Lecter gave her - Michelle. 

A special thanks to all you reviewers - I really appreciate the feedback! Bon appetit!! 

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Poetic Justice

Michelle smiled gleefully as she listened to her father talking on the phone in the other room. Her father, the notorious Dr. Lecter, known as "Hannibal the Cannibal" was ordering a variety of good cuts of beef from the local butcher. Only the best would do, of course.

Michelle suppressed a giggle as an idea came to mind of her father unwrapping a package and instead of a filet on the tray, there would be the oozing mass of an organ instead. Maybe she could even write things inside the wrappers. She looked at her red t-shirt with black lettering that read, "My dad can EAT your dad!" Michelle only wore it around the house, she didn't want to attract any undo attention over the fact that her father could possibly do just that! He also remained on the FBI's ten most-wanted list even though it had been two years since his escape from Memphis.

There were too many years when she didn't have her father and the time she had with him had become the happiest of her life. There had been a time, in the beginning, when she had wondered if she was being viewed as something edible (her father stillcalled her his "Creamsicle" at times) and there was that big sacrifice that had to be made.... Michelle looked at her five-fingered left hand. They both had their extra fingers removed. It was a feature that was too noticeable and identifiable so in Brazil, her father had them removed by a renowned surgeon. Michelle remembered how she was held in her father's arms as she sobbed thinking there would be no more "high fives with interest" - a thing her best friend Latisha and her did when Michelle still lived at the orphanage in Chicago.

What hit Michelle even harder was that she and Father had both shared that special, rare feature and it had to be taken away. The time they spent recovering and learning to master their new hands, replaced much of the feelings of loss and as they continued to grow closer, Michelle felt so full of her father's love, and the love she had for him, that even that little bit of regret was gone.

Being with him was everything to her. Now she anticipated the "fun" that her father always encouraged her to have. Fun she would have with this latest scheme. Michelle was, after all, a very obedient daughter - she grinned.

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Michelle groaned as the bag broke emptying blood, guts and gore all over her and the once pristine kitchen. It had seemed like such a good idea, at the time, making that call to the slaughterhouse ordering an assortment of cow organs. She didn't think they'd send so much and that the bag would break when she tried moving it. Granted, the 20-something year old man who brought it _was_ much bigger and stronger than her but he had made it seem like it didn't weigh very much at all. Michelle had found out differently with disastrous results!

A liver fell out of the bag onto her right foot. She quickly kicked it off and stepped on something she thought might be a pancreas and found her balance upset by that action. The pancreas slid as her foot came down on it and it was like pulling the rug out from under her - Michelle went down and with it, her desperate hold on the bag was released. The rest of the contents began to pour onto her until she was drenched and covered with entrails and blood. Michelle felt an intestine slithering like a snake down her body as she tried to sit up.

Just then, Michelle heard the sound of the Jaguar her father drove - the distinctive growl of the engine sounding like a death toll to her.

"He's going to kill me!" Michelle gasped as she frantically looked around for something that would help minimize the mess. Talk about getting caught with her hands in the cookie jar! Too bad it wasn't a cookie jar her hands, indeed her whole body, was in right now as she pushed organs off of her. There was an eight-layer, chocolate torte her father made earlier to go with their meal tonight... Michelle quickly dismissed the thought. She must not get distracted! She had to think but there didn't seem to be any options available to clear up the mess before her father discovered her latest attempt of a joke gone horribly awry.

Michelle carefully crawled through the offal going for the kitchen towel that seemed so small and inadequate for the task of wiping away some of the stuff off her face and hands. As she wiped the slime and grime off with the rapidly saturated towel, the sound of the front door opening set off a surge of panic in her and her thoughts became, "Run! Get out of here! Hurry!"

Still holding the towel, she made her way across the kitchen to the door that led out into the backyard. Michelle was so intent on her escape that she didn't pay attention to another intestine that had been caught in her long, wavy black hair. It untangled itself from her hair and fell with a splat on the floor. Michelle soon joined the organ on the ceramic tiles and cried out in shock and panic.

Hannibal Lecter smiled as he approached the front door of the two-story home he had purchased in Florence for his daughter and himself. They had been living there for almost six months now and Hannibal knew a joy and contentment he hadn't experienced since his sixth birthday when he had seen his family murdered: first his parents and then his beloved, younger sister Mischa.

Now he had a ten-year old daughter whom he loved deeply with a complete devotion. Hannibal knew that there had been a big breakthrough when Michelle opened up to him and showed him the contents of the backpack she had been carrying when she showed up at the hotel room he was staying in after he escaped police custody in Memphis. He chuckled at the memory of the cannibalistic takes of popular ad campaigns in the States on her t-shirts and stories of the Murdered Meatloaf and the Wound Man Roast when she had lived at the orphanage in Chicago. 

Sad to say, Michelle did not seem to have his culinary talents. The times he attempted to teach her to cook had made her "murdered meatloaf" and "wound man roast" sound like a gourmet's delight compared to the results of her culinary ventures. To avoid the same fate as her meatloaf, he tactfully postponed the lessons for a later date. Instruments (of torture) in Michelle's hands was another thing he had his daughter avoid. He winced with the memory of _those_ attempts, then smiled. Hannibal was delighted when he began to see the playful, mischievous part of his daughter's character. There was such fun to be explored and enjoyed with the emergence of her quirky humor. It went very well with his own love of whimsy and irony.

The smell hit him as soon as he opened the front door. Blood! Lots of it! His maroon eyes blazed a hot red as he heard his daughter fall and cry out in the kitchen where the overwhelming stench of blood and....organs? was coming from. Bovine NOT human! Lecter's mind grew sharper as all his senses focused on Michelle and the kitchen. He heard his daughter getting back on her feet and say dramatically, "Io fei gibetto a me de le mie case!" "I make my own home be my gallows" from Dante's Inferno (Canto XIII).

Lecter chuckled wondering what kind of mess awaited him on the other side of the kitchen door. He soon found out when he saw that his kitchen resembled a slaughterhouse and in the center of it stood his daughter covered with blood surrounded by various organs from a cow. A large stomach was on the kitchen table slowly sliding through the blood and entrails oozing from a large plastic bag. On the counter, there were Styrofoam trays, white freezer paper, a large black marker and the special tape butchers used when wrapping meat.

All Michelle saw was an impenetrable look on her father's face. He _was_ going to kill her! She peered up into his eyes - maroon eyes looked into her own deep purple ones. Relief surged through her! When his temper or emotions were high, they were very red though he could also be at his most calm during those times, which made it difficult to know what was going on! He didn't seem to have that eerie calmness either but Michelle still shivered with uncertainty. Had she gone too far this time?

"I know. I have to clean the mess. I wanted it to be a surprise too but things got a little out of hand," Michelle said a little nervously as her father continued to just look at the mess and her. Considering the state she was in herself, they were one and the same. The stomach fell over the edge of the table and made a loud slurping sound as it joined the other organs on the floor.

"Were you planning on making dinner tonight?" If anything, his face appeared even harder to read.

"Not exactly," Michelle shuddered at the thought. Lecter noted the reaction and smiled inwardly. It wouldn't do to show Michelle how amused he was by what he was seeing. He knew exactly how he was going to have this play out and anticipation hummed through him. It would appear that Michelle had been trying to have some fun of her own and it had backfired. He would, of course, take full advantage of the situation!

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Three hours later, a freshly clean Michelle sat at the dining room table in a lilac dress with matching sandals. Most of her hair was up in a loose chignon with tendrils and curls escaping it. There were sprigs of lilacs cascading on both sides of the chignon that Lecter himself had arranged once the kitchen and Michelle had been scrubbed clean. Now she was waiting for the dinner her father was preparing in the kitchen. The thought of the dessert that was to follow the meal had her shifting slightly in her seat in anticipation. She had a real appreciation of her father's abilities in the kitchen except for the caviar that sometimes showed up as an appetizer. Unfortunately, her father's keen sense of smell and his acute awareness of _every _detail (it seemed) around him quickly put an end to her burial of the roe in the potted plant in the foyer. 

There had been a period of almost a week of strange, unusual menu items at their meals which had Michelle finally, out of desperation, blurt out that she really didn't care for escargot. At those meals, her father wouldn't leave for even a minute, forcing her to eat some pretty disgusting things (and that was called "gourmet" food? Yuck!) Michelle remembered the satisfaction in her father's voice when he said he had been waiting for an open, honest response from her.

"You mean I could have avoided the snails, caviar, that dish made with the stuff in the sheep's bladder?" Michelle's voice had risen as she recited some of the things she had to endure the past few days.

"Of course, my dear," Hannibal replied. "I appreciate the truth and do not like you hiding it from me though I've been aware of your likes and dislikes," he added.

"You mean you already _knew_ what I thought of these things and made them anyway?"

"Precisely." He had smiled at that then grew more serious as he said, "Don't hide or bury the truth from me."

It hit her then that he had discovered her caviar funeral in the foyer and that this had been his way of teaching her a lesson. She had groaned then because she had continued to repeat the same mistake when she stoically ate the food she couldn't stand for almost a week! Since then, Michelle freely shared her thoughts, opinions and feelings about things. Her father seemed to relish them even when they differed from his own.

Michelle grew uneasy as she sat there waiting. Those memories ended up being good ones but there had been some unpleasantness too. What was Father planning? He wasn't one to let _anything_ go by. In some way, shape or form, things always had a way of coming around. What goes around comes around. Well, the s--t really hit the fan this time and she was about to get it!

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It was a liver sautéed with onions, topped with strips of bacon and a wine sauce. _It _was kidneys the next day... then some sort of blood soup. _It _continued for the next full week! Michelle thought she should have known that when her father saw _organs_, he'd see _dinner_. Truly it was poetic justice ala Lecter! 

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THE END

Author's note: This story completes the series but if a future idea comes along for Michelle and Lecter... In the meantime, I have two stories in the works: Runaway With Me and Trial of Love. Ciao for now!


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